Karma
If you must hold yourself up to your children as an object lesson, hold yourself up as a warning and not as an example. ~George Bernard Shaw
The guys who fear becoming fathers don't understand that fathering is not something perfect men do, but something that perfects the man. The end product of child raising is not the child but the parent. ~Frank Pittman
If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves. ~C.G. Jung
Children make you want to start life over. ~Muhammad Ali
If there was one thing that Tony could have changed about his life, he would choose the drinking. Not to say that there weren't other important things, like the women, his relationship with Pepper, his weapons, Afghanistan, his parents, his utter douchebagness in general; but the booze had been one of the most afflicting problems in his life.
Tony had started fairly young, fifteenish, though he wasn't entirely sure when, because that first shot of bourbon had knocked him out cold. But then one became two, and two became ten, and it had only grown.
He eventually did quit. For Pepper. And had never been more grateful that he had until the day he had cradled his son in his arms for the first time in the hospital.
Tony had felt revived, refreshed, resurrected. It had been the start of a new (clean) life. But alas, old demons continued to haunt.
James' eighteenth birthday had triggered it. Three years from now, his son would be old enough to drink, and the realization of this fact was more sobering than an ice cold shower. He remembered with sharp clarity the words Rhodes had spoken when he had informed his friend of Pepper's pregnancy.
"You know, Tony, karma often manifests in the form of one's children." The man had teased cheerfully as they celebrated Tony's impending fatherhood.
At the time it had been vaguely amusing, having a mini-me to pal around with, but after actually becoming a father, Tony had found that it was the last thing he wanted.
In spite of what he might have said to Pepper in the years before Afghanistan, alcohol had never made him happy. It had never dulled the ache of his parent's death, just as the numerous women he bedded never filled the emptiness in his heart. It had made him more miserable. It sunk its hooks in him and wouldn't let go until he had nearly died from alcohol poisoning. He had suffered through enough hangovers and worshiped at the altar of the porcelain god more times than he could remember even with the memory loss.
The misery, the pain, and the addiction had been such an integral part of his life that he hadn't even realized how far he had fallen. Only after he'd quit was he able to see the extent of self-inflicted damage accrued.
And the very thought of his precious little boy, the infant he had once held in his arms, the child that had gazed up at him in such pure admiration and love, hunched over the toilet puking and reeking and drowning in the tar-pit of addiction was enough to make Tony physically ill.
He would not allow it. He couldn't.
And even though a tiny voice in the back of his head warned that James would probably taste alcohol eventually, Tony resolved that at the very least, he would not be the one to set him on that path of self-destruction.
Even if it meant dishonoring the celebrated father-son-first-drink tradition.
Because Tony knew it always started with 'just one'.
And just one was enough to ruin everything.
Karma be damned.
It wasn't happening on his watch.
Yeah, I know. It's short. But the next one should be coming soon.
